This rare Porsche 968 Cabriolet has seen better days, seemingly left in the garage for 20 years or so following a series of mishaps that left the bumper covers cracked and the body splattered with bondo. The 968 is a rare bird these days, featuring the unusual combination of a front-engine, four-cylinder powerplant, albeit one of the largest inline fours dropped into a production car at the time. Values are hit or miss, with exceptional hardtop coupes with the manual gearbox going for the biggest bucks. Find this battered 968 convertible equipped with the automatic transmission here on eBay with bids to $6,700 with the reserve unmet.

I’ll admit, this 968 is right in the sweet spot of the types of projects I tend to take on. It’s not past the point of saving, but it’s certainly rough enough that most purists wouldn’t even bother with it. That usually spells a discount for someone like me, who is content with a project taking several years to correct. Now, I wouldn’t go for this 968 myself because it has two major strikes against it for potential future return on investment, that being the soft top and the slushbox. A hardtop coupe with a stick in this state? I’d go after that all day long, because values have been strong enough for those cars that it’s hard to lose money assuming you get it at a significant discount.

Now, that being said, the seller of this 968 may have set an unreasonable reserve based on a few items shared in the description. First, it is a low mileage car, with just over 36,000 miles. The seller believes that once you make the necessary repairs, you’ll have an example on your hands that has just one previous owner prior to him. He says it runs well, but basically the only use it has seen is to be run around the block a few times per year. The description mentions that the oil is checked frequently, but I’m not sure what difference this makes for a car that spends most of its time parked. Even if it had zero body damage, the transmission would work against it considering this isn’t exactly the most powerful Porsche you can buy.

What I’m referring to here is you can get away with an automatic in the 928, as that car was always intended to be a grand tourer anyway and the automatic suits it. This 968 was intended to be a 944 replacement, a car that was meant to be driven at this limits of its drivetrain and handling abilities. While a convertible isn’t exactly the sporting man’s choice, a soft top with a 5-speed in a car like this is a genuinely enjoyable combination. In addition to the transmission, the multiple areas of previous body damage, cracked bumper covers, and the soft top with its dead lift motors makes this one a hard sell at the current bid price (to me). The reserve could very well be above $10K, which makes this one a pricey proposition once you factor in the respray and deferred maintenance costs.